There is a need in the Pontiac for a solution to our collective waste management challenge.
Together, we produce about 5,000 tons of household waste each year. This waste is composed of compostable material (food scraps, leaves, paper) and recyclable material (plastic and metal containers) all of which should be separated from other garbage for which there is no obvious or appealing option other than simply producing much less of it.
At the moment, we transport our 5,000 tons of waste out of the county for disposal in a landfill at the cost of about $1.7 million per year. So, reducing our waste by whatever means possible is not just a good way to shrink our environmental footprint but also to save money.
Among the low-hanging fruit is compostable material. If it stays in the waste stream and ends up buried in a landfill site, it will produce methane in the process of rotting in an oxygen-deprived environment. Methane is a greenhouse gas, with about 80 times the potency of carbon dioxide in its ability to trap heat in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change and all manner of extreme weather.
Removing compostable material is a relatively easy thing to do. We each have the means of putting aside our carrot stems, potato peelings, egg shells and coffee grounds, either tossing them in a home-based compost bin where it turns into rich soil to enhance our gardens, or putting it into a municipal compost system, if there is one.
A few municipalities are well down this road, with composting systems either in place or in the plans. The question arises as to whether it might make sense to manage compost at a county-wide level and what might be the best system, or combination of systems, for this purpose. Does it make sense for municipalities to do door-to-door collection of compost, for example? It probably does in urban settings such as Shawville and Fort Coulonge. What about in rural areas where there can be distances of several kilometres between farm gates?
These are among the questions that members of the county’s waste management committee thought they were supposed to consider. Following the rejection of the garbage incinerator proposal, it seemed there was a high degree of public interest in working out other solutions, for which a waste management committee could serve a useful purpose. But, as we learned last week, the committee has been disbanded.
That’s unfortunate. There’s much work to do and, like it or not, it is our elected officials who should lead that charge. The MRC staff, which bring deep expertise to the file, can play a crucial role in supporting the deliberations of our elected representatives, providing factual information, and even advice, when called upon to do so. But we’re still a democracy, not a technocracy, which means that people we elect are there to lead and the non-elected staff are there to support.
Whether the mayors will choose to bring back a waste management committee is anybody’s guess. If they do, will they give it formal status as an advisory committee, invited to bring recommendations forward for consideration by the mayors? Would such a committee be required to follow rules of procedure that would prevent anyone from stifling the input of its members? Would such a committee be shielded from being disbanded in a sudden move catalyzed by a suggestion from some unidentified person in an in-camera meeting that it had fulfilled its purpose?
Waste management is just one of many important issues in the life of this county that require thoughtful, constructive engagement by our elected representatives. This will not happen if the mamagement of committees doing that work is as arbitrary and subject to whim as was the recently-disbanded waste management committee.
We can do better, but it will have to start with the mayors making it so.
